The Birthday Princess

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Sunday was our family’s second year in a row participating in the Scrumpy Skedaddle. The race is part of the Thirsty Three series, put on by Running Fit, and it’s held way up in Flushing, Michigan (almost 2 hours from our house) in an apple orchard.

Sunday also just happened to be my birthday, and if you know anything about me, you know that if I’m running a race on my birthday, I’m going to find a way to make it special.  😉 I decided on Friday that I simply had to dress up for the race, and after receiving permission from Jamie (my oh-so-reluctant running partner, ha ha!) and a little creative help from my friend Tonia, I made a quick trip to Party City before a hockey game and found the perfect items!

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That’s Jamie and me before the race start, where I am showing off my bright pink tutu, pink and black sparkly “Birthday Princess” sash, and a rhinestone-encrusted “birthday princess” tiara.  Yes, that’s right, a tiara! 😉 Once I got it all home, it was a struggle to figure out what to wear with all my “bling.”  Normally, I don’t work too hard to coordinate my race attire. I’ve done a sparkly tulle skirt a few times, but I rarely try to coordinate the clothes to the accessories. This time, though, it seemed important to really make sure the outfit was “put together,” because obviously, people were going to be looking at me, and I’d better not look like a slob while wearing my pretty princess garb! 😉 It took me a little while, but I was actually rather proud of finding an all-black outfit that included a cute, fitted black top with a funny wine-themed reference spelled out in rhinestones.  Not bad for a girl who is pretty fashion illiterate most of the time! 🙂

Okay, enough about me and my race attire.  This is still a race recap!  So let’s talk about the Scrumpy.

This was the second year for this race, and if you didn’t do it last year, let me educate you right up front: this is not your typical race course.  When I say the race is held “in an apple orchard,” I mean that you are actually running through an apple orchard for most of the 3.1 or 6.2 miles!!  Very often, you’re running on the rutted paths that the pickers use for their four-wheelers and carts when picking apples.  Sometimes, you’re not on a path at all…you’re running in the lanes between the rows of apple trees, which are uneven, often covered with foot-high crabgrass, and include such fun added features as large tree branches and real live apples to trip over.  Sometimes you’d get lucky and you’d be running on a dirt road, but then again, since it had rained steadily the day before, whether or not that is truly “lucky” is questionable.

The good news for our family is that we’d experienced all this in 2014, so we knew what we were up against. I did, however, hear more than one runner complaining about the terrain and refer to it as a “mud run” or “obstacle course,” lamenting their PRs all the while. The comparisons were accurate, but truly, did you not read the part where they said you’d be running through an apple orchard? :p  Oh well…I guess they’ll know for next year.

Unlike last year, we decided to just head up the morning of the race, and since it wasn’t starting until 10am (5k) or 10:45am (10k), we had plenty of time.  We left the house at 7:15am and were parked by 9:10am.  The boys and I picked up our bibs and shirts and then went back to the car to hang out with Jason.  We’d stopped at a rest area on the way up, but JJ hadn’t needed to go to the bathroom then. Of course, 20 minutes before the race started, he had to go. :/ I sent Jason and JJ off to the portapotties while I got my attire sorted out, and then Jamie and I made our way back over to the start line.

It was a chilly, misty-rain kind of morning, and Jason and I both wore jackets over our short-sleeved shirts, with the intent to do a hand off, since there was 45 minutes in between start times.  He’d headed to the porta potty with his coat, and then I was panicked because I couldn’t find them when I got there, but eventually, Jamie and I located them and we did the coat hand-off.

 

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Jason is in the bright orange shirt (very helpful!).  There were a lot of 5k runners, and they sent them off in true “waves.”  They would string a piece of orange tape across the front of a group of people to mark them off, then lower the tape to let the group go through before cordoning off another group.

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It was actually pretty well done, I thought.  They had us start at a bridge over a creek, and it was quite narrow, so their wave start really helped the congestion.

Once JJ and Jason were off and running, Jamie and I went to the finish line, about a quarter mile north, to wait for them.  We cheered all the fast runners across the line, which is always fun.  We saw the first place runner, then second, then third, and then, when the fourth place winner came through, he stopped, grabbed his medal…and then proceeded to throw up right in front of us. :p That wasn’t fun to watch, but he just wiped his mouth and kept going. 😮  Crazy things runners do. 😉

I was getting a bit panicked, because Jay and JJ had started in one of the later waves, and I didn’t know if they’d make it in time for Jamie and I to start the 10k on time.  But then, about 10:41am, they came across…

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You can see that JJ sprinted ahead of his dad at the end, ha ha.  They ended up finishing with a great time: 33:00 and 33:01, respectively!  That’s a full two and a half minutes faster than last year. I took a quick post-race photo before handing off my jacket and running to the 10k start line.

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I love that picture—such genuine smiles! They were both clearly very proud of themselves. 🙂

After my little warm-up jog to the starting line, I found Jamie and we did our starting line selfie.

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Jamie was really angling to be toward the front, but although I knew it was kind of iffy, I really did want to try to wear my whole outfit (including tiara) for my birthday race.  So when he started walking toward the front,  I was all, “I am not about to hang with the speedy group when I’m wearing a tiara on my head.” :p  He looked at me and said, “But I need to see if any kids my age are able to pass me.”  I almost laughed out loud—he was dead serious!  He’d won the 14 and under age group award last year, but he was also the only kid 14 under to run the 10k.  😉 I had no idea he was so intent on trying to win it again!

We compromised by starting just ahead of the middle, and I told him that if he was serious about running fast and trying to win, he could feel free to leave me behind, because my goal for this race had nothing to do with time and everything to do with having fun.  He agreed, and pretty soon we were lining up with the second wave.  Because I’m shy, I managed to get right up front in my pretty pink princess outfit. 😉  There were a lot of hecklers in our wave who must have been good friends with some of the volunteers, because they were really giving them grief.  It was definitely a fun way to start the race.

Pretty soon, we were off, running across the bridge and then the road immediately went from paved to dirt…er, mud. :/  Not ideal, but it was time to replace my shoes anyway, ha ha! Jamie started out really fast…sub 8 to start! 😮 I was actually feeling pretty good, and I had my tiara stuck into my hair pretty well, along with an elastic band to secure it underneath, so I was able to keep up with him.  I thought about telling him to dial it back, but then figured I’d let him run his own race.  As I expected, he slowed down fairly soon, and then we ran together for a little bit, until my hydration belt fell off! 🙁  I had to run back and grab it, and both water bottles fell out.  Some very nice runners stopped to pick them up and hand them to me, and then, when I was struggling to get one back in its holster, another awesome runner who was right behind me said, “Here, give me that!” I handed him the bottle, and he was able to quickly slide it into the holster for me.  I love runners! 🙂

It took some effort, but I managed to catch back up to Jamie, and then we just made our way down the muddy dirt road.  We didn’t talk until we got close to a mile, and Jamie told me he wanted to walk at the one-mile mark.  When we got to the sign, we did just that, but he refused water at that point.  He admitted that he’d forgotten to start his watch right away, so his distance and time were off, and I told him we’d be fine with mine.

After about .05 of a mile, he started up again, and we made two turns until we were actually in the apple orchard. Really challenging, let me tell you.  We were running along the side of this particular stand of trees, and it was rutted and very grassy, but Jamie was keeping a good clip, definitely the high 9s/low 10s.

Right about mile 1.5, though, we were surprised to come to a sudden halt. It was a spot that required you to not only turn sharply, but also run through a narrow path in between two apple trees.  (It really wasn’t even a path.)  Besides all that, it had uneven ground, and someone had obviously figured out that it would be a real danger to run through it.  So, the volunteers forced us to stop and walk through it.  Unfortunately, I had previously set my watch to “auto pause” when I stopped, so my Garmin paused at this point.  Not terrible, but it meant that my pace would be off.  So now neither of us had an accurate pace!  It didn’t bother me, but I knew Jamie wanted to do well, and I felt bad. 🙁

We made our way past some more fields of trees (skirting the outside edge) and then stopped to walk again at mile 2. He walked about a tenth of a mile, took some water, and then started up again. We left that orchard, made our way across the main road again (dodging traffic…grrrr), and then headed to a grove of trees on the other side.  We ran around this grove, and I managed to snap a picture of Jamie as he ran.

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You can see how cloudy and dark it was. :/ I fell behind a little bit, but he stopped again at mile 3 and I caught up. He took water and actually walked a little more than a tenth, but soon he started again. We came back down that main road and he told me he didn’t want to walk again until 4.2.  We made the same turn into the orchard off the main road that we’d done earlier, but this time, there was a photographer, and I told him to smile. 😉 He grunted, but later he surprised me by telling me he actually did try to smile for every photographer.  That’s my boy! 😀

We hit mile 4.2 and walked again, where he took water and walked for about a tenth.  Up to this point, I hadn’t really heard many comments, but by this time, I think the herd had thinned out enough that people had really started to notice my getup, and I began to get lots of birthday wishes from runners passing me or volunteers that I passed.  It was really fun and totally made me smile.  I thanked them all, and joked with a few of them about my birthday princess attire. 😉  From about mile 4 to the end, I got lots of comments and compliments. 🙂

We passed the second water station at around mile 5, and Jamie choked down some water as he ran. (I will say, there weren’t a lot of water stations for this race, which surprised me; only two.)  He told me he wanted to walk again at mile 5.2.  At this point, we were running directly through a grove of trees, and the path was basically two ruts with lots of grass.  I was glad we were among the later runners, because the grass was pretty trampled down, making it easier to run in. Right at mile 5, we made the turn at the same spot where we’d been forced to walk before, but thankfully, we didn’t have to go through the super-narrow path.

He walked pretty slow for the break at 5.2, and took longer than I expected, but then when he started up again, he shot off!  I struggled to keep up, and I managed to for a while, but then I started to hang back.  I was at least able to get some pictures of him as crossed the bridge over the creek near Almar Orchards (not the same orchard that was hosting the run).

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After we passed the, we turned a corner onto a paved road (hooray!) and I could see the field with the orchards we’d just run through off in the distance.

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Then it was back past the main part of Almar’s orchards…

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…a turn toward the final stretch…

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And at that point, I let Jamie head off ahead.  He made the last turn and crossed the finish line out of my sight, but I was busy offering up my birthday princess smile for the photographer, who was set up right before the finish line—I can’t wait to see that picture, lol!

When I crossed, I heard lots of cheers and some “tutu” comments.  I made sure to smile big and then I gratefully stopped for my water and medal while I found Jamie and gave him a big hug.  Though he wasn’t sure what his overall pace was, he was still very proud of himself—he knew he’d had a good run!

We found Jay and JJ and got our post-race picture.

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Then it was time for pancakes and cider!

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They also had a blue grass band who did a great job.

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As we waited for the 10k awards, I used the QR reader on my phone to scan the kids’ bibs. JJ was delighted to find that he placed 2nd in his age group. That was the second year in a row for him! Then we scanned Jamie’s bib—and guess what?

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First place in his age group!  I showed him as we sat there listening to the blue grass band, and he quietly did a little “fist pump” and smiled a little. 😉  When he accepted his award, he was pretty happy.

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When they called out the awards, we discovered he’d actually beaten two other runners! Both boys were SO proud of their “boot glass” awards, ha ha!

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Later, when we got home, I decided to look up the official results to see just how much faster Jamie had been then the other two runners. I was shocked at what I discovered…

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He beat the second place runner by a half a second—literally, .5 seconds!!  😀  I wonder if that kid was really mad when he realized it. 😉  Jamie was super proud of himself, though,  especially when he found out his pace was a 10:17. That was much faster than what his Garmin showed, but it also didn’t account for that burst of speed he had at the beginning. I was so proud of him—he’d finished a full six minutes faster than last year’s run!  Amazing!  It was also his third-best 10k finish, only 31 seconds slower than his second-best, and less than a minute and a half off his best-ever pace—that’s amazing for the kind of challenging run that this was!!

As for me, I finished at a very respectable 1:04:01, but more importantly, I not only finished within a few seconds of Jamie, I managed to do something that I think is almost more impressive than a PR: I ran 6.2 miles with a tiara on my head! 😉

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I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday. 🙂

Thanks for reading!!

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